Wireless phones are commonly misplaced, and user's need assistance locating their wireless phones. For example, a wireless household phone that is linked to a landline may have a pager button on the recharging station that permits a caller to easily locate the phone. When the pager button is actuated, the recharging station sends out a signal that causes the wireless household phone to broadcast and audible ring that allows the misplaced wireless household phone to be easily located.
Networked wireless phones that operate within a relatively broad service area can also be misplaced. These networked wireless phones include, but are not limited to, cellular phones, WiFi enabled phones, WiMax phones, and other such wireless phones that operate using a network system. Since the networked wireless devices operate within a much broader service area than the household broadcast area, the problem with locating a networked wireless phone is magnified. For example, a misplaced mobile phone may be left in a variety of different places such as a car, a household couch, a desk drawer at home, a desk drawer in the office, or a briefcase. Each of these locations may be easily accessible by the owner, however, the networked wireless phone may not be visible, and thus not be located. This problem is further compounded by the variety of different inaudible ring tones including, but not limited to, vibrate mode, low volume ring tones, the combination of vibrate and low volume ring tones, or other such ring tones that may be inaudible if the mobile phone is misplaced.
Commonly, the owner of a cellular telephone may attempt to locate the misplaced cell phone by directly calling the cellular phone from another telephone. However, if cellular phone ring is not audible, the cellular phone will remain lost. Therefore, even when using another telephony device to call the misplaced mobile phone, if the mobile phone ring tone is inaudible or not visible, the networked wireless handset will not be located.